Sheikh Hasina in Time’s 100 most influential people’s list

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DHAKA, April 20, 2018 (BSS) – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been included in the US-based Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people of 2018.

The international magazine put the Bangladesh premier on its annual high- status list of 100 most powerful people for her globally acclaimed humanitarian role under difficult circumstances in sheltering more than one million forcibly displaced Rohingya people who fled violence in their homeland in Myanmar.

The list published online on Thursday also includes US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The magazine also published an article on Sheikh Hasina acknowledging her unmatched humanitarian role in taking the challenges of sheltering Rohingyas without any fear.

“Bearing the legacy of her father, who led Bangladesh’s Liberation War, Hasina has never been afraid of a fight,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director for Human Rights Watch, writes in the article.

Referring to the huge influx of Rohingyas that began last August to escape atrocities by the Myanmar army, Ganguly noted that as an impoverished country, Bangladesh had not welcomed massive influxes, but Sheikh Hasina accepted the humanitarian challenge and did not turn back the traumatised victims of ethnic cleansing.

Ganguly in the article also recalled Hasina’s strong position against military regimes in 1990s and in 2008 to restore democracy in Bangladesh that also brought her the landslide victory in the following national election.

Last year, British media honoured Sheikh Hasina as the ‘Mother of Humanity’ for her remarkable role in dealing with the Roghingya issue when the leading English newspaper of the United Arab Emirate (UAE) Khaleej Times appreciated her humane approach to the Rohingyas, dubbing her as the ‘New Star of the East’.

Earlier in 2016, business magazine Fortune ranked Sheikh Hasina the 10th among the world’s 50 leaders who were transforming the world and inspiring others to do the same.

In 2015, business magazine Forbes also included the Bangladesh Prime Minister in a list of 100 most powerful women in the world.